Posts Tagged violence

I’ve waited a bit to comment on this, in part because I’ve had other things going on, and in part because I wanted to see what further developments came from it. And I think I’ve got enough of a picture of what happened.

First, a recap for anyone who hasn’t heard about this yet. At a recent debate in Kentucky between Rand Paul and his Democratic opponent Jack Conway, a woman was subdued and allegedly stomped in the head by Rand Paul supporters.

(I say allegedly because the video shows that she was stomped kinda on the shoulder, not the head. Not that this somehow makes it okay, but just mentioning it in the interest of accuracy, which as will soon be demonstrated, is important because the Left has ignored it. Accuracy, that is.)

The action itself, of course, seems pretty inexcusable. Some conservatives speculated that this woman and the people who attacked her were part of some kind of conspiracy and all in on it together, but that isn’t the case. Rand Paul immediately condemned the incident, and the person responsible for the stomping, a Rand election coordinator, was fired and banned from future events.

Okay, sounds good so far. There are supposedly criminal charges pending, Rand has disavowed the action, and we move on, right?

Nope.

The “activist ” involved – a woman named Lauren Valle — claims that she was peacefully presenting her sign when she was recognized by Rand supporters, surrounded, and attacked. She did nothing, she says, but exercise her First Amendment rights, and those evil right-wingers viciously attacked her!

This, of course, became the narrative the Left was pushing – that the Right is violent and extreme, and will use violence to suppress free speech. Leftist shill and nutjob Chris Matthews almost immediately drew Nazi comparisons, invoking Brownshirted Republicans beating dissenters.

Well just before the tape I was identified by the Rand Paul campaign because they’ve seen me around town at these events. And they realized they know me because of my work and they don’t support it. So they actually formed a blockade around me once they realized that I was there. And as Rand’s car pulls up they step in front of me and start to block me so I stepped off the curb to try and get around them and at that point they pursued me around the car, chased me around the car, and what you see in the video is when I’m in the front of the car and that’s when I’m pulled down and then my head is stomped on.

More details at Red State. But honestly, she’s a young woman with a criminal history. And as we can see she’s obviously lying about being “chased around the car,” which is typical for leftists. And of course, commie idiots like Blue Texan and Scott Lemieux are simply suborning the dishonesty. It’s all plain as day.

Robert Stacy McCain, who has followed this story diligently, also opines:

Red State is quick to say, “You don’t stomp on a person’s head.” Indeed. But as Red State also says, “the idea that Valle was the victim of an angry mob . . . is demonstrably false. . . . She claims to have been an innocent bystander. She clearly was not.”

This video was sent to RedState by an anonymous witness at the event. It shows what Valle was doing when the Paul supporters grabbed her. No one chased her around the car. She was never in front of the car. As you can see in the video, Valle reached in the candidate’s window with her “RepubliCorp” sign and shoved it in his face. Several supporters in Paul shirts have her surrounded at that point, and a man in a suit is the first person to actually intervene physically. It’s hard to tell from the video, but it could be that the man in the suit was with Paul’s security staff.

Toward the end of the video, you see several Paul supporters asking a police officer to come intervene. It was Paul supporters who told Profitt to back off. It was Paul supporters who brought the police. Contrary to the growing narrative on the left, this video clearly shows that Valle was not the victim of a conspiracy to “take her out.”

[…]

Again, as the video clearly demonstrates, Valle was there to do more than simply “hold a sign,” and Paul supporters were not reacting to a mere dislike of her message.

As we noted at the beginning of the article, none of that is any excuse, nor even mitigating circumstances, when it comes to Profitt stomping on Valle’s head.

So we get to the real matter here. Yes, it was wrong that Valle was attacked the way she was. But then again, we have to consider the fact that she was wearing a disguise, and she lunged at a conservative political candidate – twice, and once while shoving an object at him. And she responded by condemning right-wing violence.

Miss Valle appears to be an itinerant all-purpose protester. Two years ago, while a student at Columbia University, she was the youngest of five Americans detained by Chinese officials after unfurling a “Free Tibet” banner at the Beijing Olympics. In May of this year, she was charged with felony trespassing in Louisiana when she and other Greenpeace activists illegally boarded a ship, unfurled a banner, and painted the ship with slogans, a protest evidently timed to coincide with an appearance in the area by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. (Their banner read: “Salazar Ban Arctic Drilling.”) Law enforcement officials said the Greenpeace group had been in the area for two weeks and “had been repeatedly warned not to hamper clean up operations and not to trespass.”

So what we have is a professional troublemaker/publicity hound who instigated a response that she and the Left could then use to demonize the Right. And it worked. Because if they were really worried about politically motivated violence at these kinds of events, they would have mentioned the other attackthat occurred that night:

In a separate incident, according to the Kentucky Post, “a Conway supporter stepped on the foot of a female Rand supporter, who recently had foot surgery. The woman was wearing a surgical boot, but after the injury, her incision was cut open. Police say she refused medical treatment and also filed an assault report.

A woman in disguise lunges at a candidate while thrusting an object at him, and is subdued, and it is proof of inherent Right-wing violence. At the same event, a Left-winger stomps on the bandaged foot of a conservative woman, and nary a peep. Typical.

And don’t lecture us, Mr. Matthews, about people who “hire armies” in politics. Why don’t you ask some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters how Obama’s goon squads cheated in every caucus from Iowa to Texas?

On October 19 outside the venue where a candidate debate was about to be held between Arizona’s Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords and her Republican challenger Jesse Kelly, a MoveOn.org-style, left-wing activist physically accosted a lone conservative that had the temerity to yell back and challenge the leftist’s outrageous claims.

Maxine Waters has decries the Tea Party protests as “outrageous” and supported the demonstrably false media meme that Tea Partiers are a dangerous group. But lost in her rhetoric in how scary those dastardly Tea Partiers are for showing up with signs and waving flags, is the fact that Waters supported “outrageous” behavior — in the form of riots — back in 1992, when she stood to gain political clout from it.

“The Tea Party emerges as not only outrageous, but they have turned up the volume in ways that even Code Pink have not been able to do,” Rep. Maxine Waters said the other day on MSNBC. A video (warning: some adult language) from Breitbart.tv has been making the rounds interspersing quotes from that MSNBC interview with clips from a 2007 “antiwar” rally where Waters fulminated about then-President Bush and other members of his administration.

The Breitbart video very effectively makes the case that Waters is guilty of hypocrisy. Her behavior at the rally is at least as unattractive as her description of the tea partiers’ conduct. On the other hand, so what? When has a politician ever complained about the other side’s incivility without being guilty of hypocrisy? Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Coyne Maloney runs the political website/blog/twitter feed at Brain Terminal, and is also co-founder of an independent film company known as On the Fence Films, which produced the spectacular documentary on political bias on college campuses, Indoctrinate U. If you’re not familiar with his work, I highly recommend you check some of his stiff out.

Maloney first caught my attention before the Iraq War, when he infiltrated some of the anti-war protests and filmed the antics there. He has since filmed at several protests, cataloging the rhetoric displayed at these events. And given the sudden concern that the left-wing media have over the supposedly over-the-top and hateful sentiments at the Tea Party protests, Maloney is the perfect guy to remind the left of the recent past that they never seemed to want to notice while it was happening, and are eager to forget about now. Read the rest of this entry »

Nine suspects tied to a militia in the Midwest are charged with conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral in the hopes of killing more law enforcement people, federal prosecutors said Monday.

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said agents moved on the group because the Hutaree members were planning a violent reconnaissance mission sometime in April — just a few days away. Read the rest of this entry »

That gem of the Democratic Party, Alan Grayson, made an impassioned cry against the “fear and hatred” of the Republican Party. Grayson then went on to demonstrate the civility of the left by calling for the complete elimination of Republicans.

Michelle Malkin graces us with her latest article, on her website and on Townhall, in which she outlines how the left-wing manufactures and trumps up incidents of hate and violence to further their own agenda.

I’m still on semi-vacation, but the Left never takes a break from falsely accusing the Right of fomenting hatred and violence through political speech. The MSM never takes a break from whitewashing leftist intolerance, death threats, and extremism — and engaging in selective reporting (or rather, non-reporting) of the long history of leftists’ manufacturing of hatred for political gain. My syndicated column fills in the missing context. In related developments, Glenn Reynolds takes a look at a new dubious report of rock-throwing.Erick Erickson shreds Josh Marshall’s specious incitement accusations. Patterico reports on the latest Twitter death threats against the Palin family. (Here’s a reminder about the one a Toronto Star columnist posted about me, which was laughed off by her editor and ignored by her colleagues). Here’s Mary Katharine Ham’s reminder that 7 of the 10 violent incidents during the summer town hall protests were brought to you by Obama-bots and union thugs. And in case you need a quick refresher on the routine liberal ugliness that will never be decried by the civility police, see hereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehere. Read the rest of this entry »

The Republican Heretic

A Republican and a Heretic, in multiple senses of both words. A small L libertarian conservative in the Midwest, concerned with limiting the size and power of government and halting the growth of the paternalistic progressive aristocracy. Interested in history, religion, and law, and policies dealing with the aforementioned. Will feature comments on stories or articles I find interesting, whether related to politics or anything else that catches my eye.

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